KVR Audio

Shy · Post by **Shy** » Mon May 14, 2007 11:47 pm

Here is a Juno-106 for you with a little less cheese. Hear some other examples on synthmania, and then come back and laugh at the poor old Juno-106

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Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Tue May 15, 2007 12:24 am

MitchK1989 wrote:people who don't see why the junos are sought after are missing the point. The point is that the parameter ranges on the junos are all sweet spot, and they have a slider for every function. You could let your dog program it and he'd still be unable to come up with a "bad" sound.

Is that with or without the built-in chorus? If you mean without, then well... we have very different opinions about synth sounds and "sweet spots".

But, that's quite alright.

Modeler · Post by **Modeler** » Tue May 15, 2007 1:26 pm

Shy wrote:I too can take any synth, set up some cheesy as hell presets and make it play a cheesy to begin with tune poorly.

It was an A/B comparison - I figured it didn't matter what the tune was. The sound was too cheesy I admit, but it was (in my opinion) the most Juno-esque of the plug-in's 16 presets. I guess I wanted to use a sound that anyone who had the plug-in would have instant access to.

Shy wrote:The fact is though, that the Juno-106 is one very fine sounding synth. Yes it's not incredibly sophisticated, but it has its own character and it's very usable. Nope, I haven't heard any emulation that sounds like it.

I have, this one - hence the point of this thread. I have since put it through an external chorus plug-in, which I attempted to tweak to match the effect of the Juno's chorus. The results were surprisingly good, but I'm not sure I dare post them now.

androidlove · Post by **androidlove** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:00 pm

they may be close, but the difference is the deal breaker

Kebmaster · Post by **Kebmaster** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:03 pm

The Junos like all roland synths were fantastic sounding and were very inspiring to use. Although the Juno 106 is very simple it has loads of character which inspires you to write brilliant melodies, chords or basslines without too much effort. Even with the chorus off, there is something there that has never quite been replicated in VST form. I still long for that warm Roland sound in a plug in.
Would love to try the Jupiter 8v by Arturia.

dirty oscillators · Post by **dirty oscillators** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:30 pm

Kebmaster wrote:The Junos like all roland synths were fantastic sounding and were very inspiring to use. Although the Juno 106 is very simple it has loads of character which inspires you to write brilliant melodies, chords or basslines without too much effort. Even with the chorus off, there is something there that has never quite been replicated in VST form. I still long for that warm Roland sound in a plug in.
Would love to try the Jupiter 8v by Arturia.

there's something really nice and distinct about those roland filters. i won't ever give up my Jupiter 6.

Modeler · Post by **Modeler** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:53 pm

Kebmaster wrote:Even with the chorus off, there is something there that has never quite been replicated in VST form. I still long for that warm Roland sound in a plug in.

That's exactly what I used to think, which is why I held on to my 106. I was amazed by how close the Flintlock VSTi is to the real thing - I thought it would be nothing like it.

Kebmaster wrote:Would love to try the Jupiter 8v by Arturia.

Well, why don't you then?

The demo isn't dongled like their Prophet-5 emulation.

Liquidclear · Post by **Liquidclear** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:56 pm

You can emulate a Juno with much tweaking, but IMO, the Juno's greatest strengh is it just fits in a mix so easily.

lynx · Post by **lynx** » Tue May 15, 2007 4:23 pm

The bad thing about the 106 is that Roland packed the most of the VCF and VCA circuits in one single IC per voice instead of soldering the components to the mainboard, to save space. There was one or more bad batches of these ICs that were prone to fail and the thing is when that happens you can't adress the specific component that is malfunctioning: you have to replace the entire VCF/VCA IC. These ICs are no longer made, are getting scarse and expensive and Roland didn't leave us enough information to clone them 100% exact.

lynx · Post by **lynx** » Tue May 15, 2007 4:25 pm

Liquidclear wrote:You can emulate a Juno with much tweaking, but IMO, the Juno's greatest strengh is it just fits in a mix so easily.

That is my opinion, too.

dreaddd · Post by **dreaddd** » Tue May 15, 2007 6:09 pm

plus my alpha juno in midi loop wouldnt play the same part exactly the same every time in 100 loops...i got mad sometimes because of that doing it...some other times instead is just plain nice...
my 2 cents anyway
Peace

Modeler · Post by **Modeler** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:11 pm

Shy wrote:Here is a Juno-106 for you with a little less cheese. Hear some other examples on synthmania, and then come back and laugh at the poor old Juno-106 .

Okay, now things are getting interesting. I have this patch on my 106, it's from the factory bank (the filename gave it away). This patch uses Chorus I mode, I had a go at recreating the MP3 posted by Shy, running the VST through an external Chorus plug-in:

A74 - Sweep II

This patch has an interesting decay, the LFO comes in despite the note having been released - not so with the plug-in. To my ears it's still quite close, playing the two side-by-side I stand by my claim that the VSTi is surprisingly accurate.

This would have been a better test rather than the shit I posted earlier.

Shy · Post by **Shy** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:22 pm

And I think it sounds absolutely horrible compared to it and nothing like it

.

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Tue May 15, 2007 9:36 pm

Modeler wrote:
Shy wrote:Here is a Juno-106 for you with a little less cheese. Hear some other examples on synthmania, and then come back and laugh at the poor old Juno-106 .
Okay, now things are getting interesting. I have this patch on my 106, it's from the factory bank (the filename gave it away). This patch uses Chorus I mode, I had a go at recreating the MP3 posted by Shy, running the VST through an external Chorus plug-in:

A74 - Sweep II

This patch has an interesting decay, the LFO comes in despite the note having been released - not so with the plug-in. To my ears it's still quite close, playing the two side-by-side I stand by my claim that the VSTi is surprisingly accurate.

This would have been a better test rather than the shit I posted earlier.

Wohoo! BIG differences in the sounds! The original Juno is more detailed & "creamy" I would say than the emulation. Thanks for taking the time to compared thought, now I know that analog is not just a little different sounding that the virtual clones!

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Wed May 16, 2007 2:47 am

people who don't see why the junos are sought after are missing the point. The point is that the parameter ranges on the junos are all sweet spot, and they have a slider for every function. You could let your dog program it and he'd still be unable to come up with a "bad" sound.

I've let my dog program it several times, because I always struggle to come up with anything memorable on a 106. The dog's patches weren't its bollocks either.

parameter ranges all sweet spot? How come the filter dies out at anything below approx 1/8 and does almost nothing for the top half. Do you seriously like the sound of the 106 filter res when you turn it up anywhere near full? You actually like that horrible unmusical whine it makes? As far as I'm concerned at least 50% or more of the settings on the 106 are plain bland or simply don't do anything useful. And as for the unison (which should be the one thing that might actually make an analogue have some power) is absolutely useless. The DCOs obviously aren't stable enough to do nothing in unison, instead they step around nastily and obviously. Absolutely unlike any decent VCO synth with unison, and absolutely unuseable. The stupid LFO control on the joystick/wheel thing...it's either on or off. Useless. The envelopes - attack won't go nearly long enough, the decay is flabby and slow compared even to other Roland gear such as the 101/202s. The filter sounds musical only in the lower mids/mids in a very fine range. It almost does nothing in the higher octaves.

I'll still maintain that most who rave about the 106 haven't played with a serious analogue poly with character. Jupiters were quite nice...I like those (in a different league to 106s though), ProphetV...do me a favour - you can't for one second believe a 106 can be spoken of in the same sentence as one of those. Even Roland's own alternative cheapos were better. JX3p for example - much more character and a little bit of oomph in the filter. Any of the JX range. Even the pathetic Korg Poly6 sounded richer than a 106. I can only think of JenSX synths that were any worse than 106s. The AlphaJunos had serious shortcomings, but they were at least capable of quite a wide range of sound. I've still got my 106 only because it's almost unsellable here. One dead DCO and who would buy it anyway? I'll use almost any decent VSTi in place of the 106. It's just bland and dull. Seriously...it's a better ashtray holder than a synth.

I'm being subjectively objective here (

). I'm actually an analogue nut. Used to collect all kinds of synths, and still have a few that I never got rid of and probably won't. And the 106 is probably the single worst buy I ever made for anything analogue (the little 606 drum machine I bought along with a 303 once was a poor buy, but at least it only cost a few quid). For 350 quid (the going rate at the time) I wasted my money and should have had the sense to buy something else. I kept hold of it just for nostalgia sake, as the 106 was my first analogue poly. But nostalgia is all it's good for. If a 106 is the only analogue you've ever owned, of course you'll defend it, but believe me there are any number of better ones around. It doesn't have character apart from the acknowledged chorus. Roland choruses were always distinctive. The synth itself has only novelty value. Sure it was the only synth of its time to have sysex for slider control, but sysex is a very unweildy way of controlling anything. I used to automate it via Cubasev1.0, and it was a royal pain in the arse, even when you figure out your own sysex map for it. There are other better synths of the 80s that have midi control, and most modern analogues will let you automate them more easily.

Flintlock Juno-106 versus the real thing.